Most people spend their energies looking for a great website designer, but often neglect to choose a good website host. For most people they start examining their web host carefully only when their website goes offline because their web host goes down. While we cannot prevent such an occurance totally, it will help if you choose a good website host. This article covers three reasons why you should spend some time looking for a good website host.

This article covers three reasons why you should spend some time looking for a good website host.

1. Lost of sales

Any business owner knows that when your website is down, you lose sales. It's that simple. Spending time looking for a good website host with minimum downtime is important as it can allow you a good rest at night knowing that your internet sales websites is running like it should.

Mary an internet business owner had a problem with her web host and true enough the web site server went down and her ecommerce website also went down with it. To add to her troubles, she was running a Pay Per Click Advertising Campaign with several Pay Per Click Search Engines like Google Adsense, Overture, Findwhat and she had to quickly disable all her ads until her website came online again. She later realized that she should have spent some time looking for a website host that was not only value for money but had a good reputation.

2. Lost of Advertising Revenue

Another business model online involves advertising and content related websites. These websites provide lots of free content but make money when people click on contextual and banner advertising on these websites. Some popular websites have many visitors a day and the loss of advertising revenue can be staggering.

Yahoo.com in a celebrated case was down one day after a massive Denial of Service Attack. Although it had nothing to do with a web host, we can all learn a lesson from this. If your website is advertising supported and advertising is your main monetization income stream then, you need to choose a website host that can ensure that it stays up and has a reliable connection to the internet.

3. Inability to grow your website

Another reason to choose a website host is that when most of us first startout online, we know nothing about web hosting features and choose the cheapest deal around. The problem with this is that the cheapest deal may not be the best deal and when you have a huge content website later and want to grow your website, you may find that your current web host is unable to provide the support for certain scripts.

John was one such internet business owner. He wanted to add a sql database for this new script that he was to get then the reality of the cost factor hit him. The web hosting company that he was using had only two plans and the difference in one extra website was to be $50. He later spent some time looking online for a better website host and migrated his entire network of websites to that web host. You may not be so fortunate, if your website is too large, sometimes it may be very difficult to migrate it to another web host. Thus you want to spend some time thinking about the long term growth of your website before you choose a web host.

In conclusion, choosing a web host requires some serious thinking as it can limit the growth of your internet commerce business. Hopefully the three points above have highlighted the importance of choosing a good web host and provided some examples of web hosts to avoid.

Best-web-host-directory.com is a full featured web host directory with articles and directory listings of the best web hosting and website building companies online.

The creation of the .eu domain was endorsed by the European Parliament back in March 2000, but took 5 more years to become a reality. The motive for introducing a European TLD was to "accelerate electronic commerce" in the EU; it was also part of the effort to promote Community-consciousness, both within the EU and without. The domain has certainly been a success, quickly becoming one of the world's most popular TLDs; but with that success has come conflict.

Institutions

In May 2003 the European Registry for Internet Domains (EURid) was selected as the .eu registry, and was entrusted with the organisation, administration and management of the new .eu domain. EURid is a not-for-profit organisation whose fees are intended only to cover its costs.

EURid has appointed the Arbitration Court attached to the Czech Chamber of Commerce as its provider of .eu ADR services. In principle it could appoint more providers in future.

Procedures

Under the .eu Regulation, ADR proceedings may be initiated by any person: you do not need to be the owner of the trade mark or name upon which a complaint is based.

The ADR proceedings will usually be conducted in the language specified in the registration agreement, and in practice that usually means English.

The complainant files a complaint in the requisite form and pays the up-front fees. The fees vary with the number of domain names at issue and the number of panellists chosen, and range between Euros 1990 and 5400+. After the complaint is filed and the fee paid, a block is put on the domain name preventing transfer for the duration of the proceedings. The respondent's case is set out in its response, which must be filed within 30 working days of the date of receipt of the complaint. If no response is received, the expert is empowered to consider this as a ground to accept the complainant's arguments. In most cases there will be no opportunity for the complainant to reply to the respondent's response.

However, the ADR panel does have the power to request further information and/or documents from the parties. Oral hearings may be ordered in "exceptional circumstances", but in practice that is likely to mean almost never.

The remedies available are revocation and transfer or the domain name(s) at issue; the remedy will be implemented by the domain registrar. There is no appeal from a panel decision (unlike, for instance, at Nominet). However, an aggrieved party is free to initiate court proceedings

Substantive rules

The substantive rules governing .eu domain name arbitrations are set out in Article 21 of the .eu Regulation:

"A registered domain name shall be subject to revocation, using an appropriate extra-judicial or judicial procedure, where that name is identical or confusingly similar to a name in respect of which a right is recognised or established by national and/or community law ... and where it: (a) has been registered by its holder without rights or legitimate interest in the name; or (b) has been registered or is being used in bad faith."

Providing there is identity or confusing similarity between the domain name and someone else's name or mark, you only need to establish one of the other criterion - a lack of rights/legitimate interest upon registration or bad faith – to succeed in the ADR proceedings.

The UDRP contains much the same criteria, but under the UDRP both need to be established to ground an action. It is unclear why the Commission decided to treat these criteria as disjunctive, given that the Recitals to the Regulation highlight the UDRP (as administered by WIPO) as an example of best practice - and given the trenchant criticism from many quarters that the UDRP is (or has been applied in a way that is) excessively pro-complainant.

Respondent's rights and legitimate interests

How can a respondent demonstrate rights or legitimate interests in a domain?

"Rights" usually means trade mark rights, registered or unregistered. An issue here will be whether names used in a non-commercial context can give rise to relevant rights.

"Legitimate interests" is a more nebulous concept. In order to demonstrate a legitimate interest, a domain name registrant will need to show: (i) commercial use of the domain name (or demonstrable preparation for such use), (ii) "legitimate and non-commercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent to mislead customers or harm the reputation of a name on which a right is recognised or established by national and/or community law", or (iii) that the domain name designates the registrant. So, the "legitimate interest" criterion is a low hurdle, but it is a hurdle nonetheless, and can be expected to trip up some registrants.

The two main problems with this definition, in our view, are that demonstrable preparations to make "legitimate and non-commercial or fair" use of a domain do not constitute a legitimate interest; and that any "harm" to a trade mark undermines a claim to legitimate interests notwithstanding a fair use. Don't hold your breath for [http://www.euridsrulessuck.eu].

Bad faith

The Regulation says that bad faith "may be demonstrated" in the following circumstances:

(1) “circumstances indicate that the domain name was registered or acquired primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name to the holder of a name in respect of which a right is recognised or established by national and/or Community law or to a public body”; or

(2) “the domain name has been registered in order to prevent the holder of such a name in respect of which a right is recognised or established by national and/or Community law, or a public body, from reflecting this name in a corresponding domain name, provided that: a pattern of such conduct by the registrant can be demonstrated; or the domain name has not been used in a relevant way for at least two years from the date of registration; or in circumstances where, at the time the ADR procedure was initiated, the holder of a domain name in respect of which a right is recognised or established by national and/or Community law or the holder of a domain name of a public body has declared his/its intention to use the domain name in a relevant way but fails to do so within six months of the day on which the ADR procedure was initiated”;

(3) “the domain name was registered primarily for the purpose of disrupting the professional activities of a competitor”; or

(4) “the domain name was intentionally used to attract Internet users, for commercial gain, to the holder of a domain name website or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with a name on which a right is recognised or established by national and/or Community law or a name of a public body, such likelihood arising as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement of the website or location of a product or service on the website or location of the holder of a domain name”; or

(5) “the domain name registered is a personal name for which no demonstrable link exists between the domain name holder and the domain name registered”.

The circumstances are presented as little more than guidance, but there is a tendency for panellists to interpret these in the same way at they would an ordinary legislative provision. In particular, it is a rare panellist who will find that a case falling squarely within one of the examples of potential bad faith does not involve bad faith.

Some of the circumstances which are indicative of bad faith have been carried over from the UDRP; however, several are new. Most interesting is the suggestion that a declaration of an intention to use a domain name "in a relevant way" might protect that domain name from an allegation of bad faith (at least one based on there having been no relevant use) for a six month period from the date of initiation of the ADR procedure.

Conclusions

The .eu domain name dispute procedure is in its infancy. At the time of writing there is a steady stream of decisions coming out of the Czech Arbitration Court. The majority of those are complaints about EURid's failure to properly apply the Regulation during the sunrise period. Our reading of the EURid rules is that they are more pro-complainant than the UDRP. If that is right, a higher level of complaints can be expected than under the UDRP.

Hagit Ben-Artzi is principal at Sequitur IPS, a consultancy specialising in representing individuals and companies in domain name arbitration proceedings. The Sequitur IPS website is at http://www.sequitur-ips.com.

Most of the people looking for products and services on the net, hunt for websites via major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Optimizing your website for higher search engine positioning is to allure mass to drive towards your website that is the likely to be your prospective buyer. To generate considerable traffic to your website it requires higher positioning in initial pages of search engines.

Here, I have given some key tips to dip you in the technical aspects available on the net to assist how to optimize your website.

The Title: Whatever text you put in the title will reviewed in the reverse bar of browser when people view the web page. So, place suitable title according to your business and products.

Meta Tags: You might be aware of Meta tags or using this on your current website. We will talk on the description tag.
Description tag: Major search engines that support Meta tags will usually depict the description tag with the title in the results. Search engines many times hold entire Meta tag of the description field. The webmasters should keep in mind that that the description tags must be short to grab the attention of a user.

Keyword: You should research deeply before finalizing keywords, as it is the most important factor in website optimization.

Each keyword's weight, rate, size, status and proximity all have an effect on the ranking. You should optimize all these key factors cautiously. Examining the top ten ranking website's content and ranking factors will assist you to optimize your website. To find keywords, log on http://www.wordtracker.com and http://inventory.overture.com.

Content: The content of your website should be informative that provides people come to acknowledged about new things or be interested in. This will result revisiting of the mass at your website. Try to make your content keywords rich to drive search engines to pick up your site. Use appropriate keywords according to your business or services you offer.

Create website sitemap: Make complete site map of your website, contain all the links of main pages of your website. So the search engine robots could explore your entire website. To see example follow this link: http://www.adidas.com/in/performance/sitemap.asp

Publish articles and newsletter/press releases: Writing and publishing is one of the best ways of marketing your website on internet. It helps to generate substantial traffics to your website. You can submit articles to e-zines, article directories, web sites and magazines that offer article submissions. Don't forget to include your business information and contact address at the bottom of the article.

Article Directories ==> http://www.shvoong.com, http://goarticles.com, http://www.uniterra.com, http://www.allfreelancework.com, http://ezinearticles.com etc. Use keyword "article submission" in your search.

Press release sites ==> http://www.free-press-release.com, http://www.PRweb.com, http://www.prleap.com, http://www.pressbox.co.uk etc. Use keyword "free press release distribution" in your search.
Post ads: You can place your ads on free advertising and classified ad sites, free links sites, newsgroups, which offers ads posting.

Link: The most effectual method to make your pages important for the search engine crawlers, creating links to other sites with yours. It makes your website worthwhile for the search engines. The more links at website the more significant website is considered, and will be rewarded with higher page ranks.

However, not all links are considered valuable by the search engines. The search engine will consider links more valuable if they are from sites that are having higher page ranks and also offers similar area of interest as your.

Use keyword "free link exchange" in your search.

Submit Website to search Engines: After optimizing you web site, its time to submit it to all major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN etc, after all for this only you have optimized your web site. There are many web-sites that provide manual free submission to almost all the main search engine. Use keyword "website submission" in your search.

Submit to the directories: Search engines and directories are different. Do not mix them. Be very careful while submitting your website to a directory. Read the directory's submission directions with full presence of mind. You can submit to directories like DMOZ and also paid directories like Yahoo. Use "web directory submission" in search.

Regular inspection of website: Once you achieve targeted page ranks and positions in search engine, don't become lousy; after all it is not forever. You should keep eye on your contenders' activities. If you are not satisfied with search engine ranking results, you should optimize your website more to attain higher search engines ranking position.

This article was created under consultation of expert SEO, who has proved his capabilities to raise page rank and position of many websites in various search engines.

This was brief description for optimizing website. Very soon I am going to publish informative series of articles on each of these key factors at http://seoservices-website-promotion.blogspot.com.

Paras Yadav:- An experinced article and website content writer. Internet marketing veteran since two years.

Go to: [http://web-content-writing.blogspot.com] or http://seoservices-website-promotion.blogspot.com.

Believe it or not, even thieves are already high-tech these days. Browsing the net and reading through online forums, I came across a startling story about how thieves have found their way to infiltrate the world wide web. I read about a lady who was planning to put up a web page of her own. As the normal process dictates, she first thought of a domain name for her website. She chose her own name and had it checked in CNet Domain Search page for domain registrations and found out that it is very much available. A couple of days later, she checked it again and was shocked to discover that her name is already taken. She found out that her name is already a domain name registered to a firm with the name Chesterton Holdings.

The helpless lady brought the matter to the attention of Larry Seltzer, a columnist of eweek.com and a staunch critic of cyber crimes. Larry Seltzer investigated the matter himself. He checked the website whose domain name is that of the lady's. He immediately came to a conclusion that firm who "owns" the website and its domain name is a domain squatter, one among many domain squatters scattered all over cyberspace. Seltzer saw that the website is full of advertisements all domain squatters are associated with. He even claimed that the advertisements were syndicated through information.com. In Seltzer's column in eweek.com, he followed the next events regarding the theft of the lady's domain name. He reported that after a number of days, Chesterton, the bogus owner, has already let go of the stolen domain. He said this could have been prompted by the low hits or very few visits the site had. Apparently, silly domain squatters do not stay long in a domain, which is not lucrative for them. Squatters are somehow wise, at least in that sense.

The question that was immediately formed in my mind that Mr. Seltzer also posted, is how in the world was Chesterton able to register someone else's name to be its domain name? Moreover, why was the squatter allowed or given the permission to have ownership of a domain that is obviously not theirs? Anyway, I think my questions are unanswerable as of the moment. Even big companies and other established domain owners cannot exactly explain how domain theft is being successfully done. I bet you have also heard of the stealing of panex.com's domain. Well, if you have not, the bottom line is that even the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), whose mandate is to police the world wide web, failed to fully account the culprit behind the theft.

Curious about how rampant domain theft is, I made a little cyber investigation and probed on my own. I logged on to search.com, a property of CNet domain, and searched for the availability of my own name. I guess you've already guessed the result. Yes, my own name is already a registered domain name. With whom is it registered? Bingo! It is with Chesterton Holdings. My possible domain is already stolen. But I am confident the squatter will leave sooner than I think. My name is unpopular nor does it sound good to generate thousands of hits and visits. There is no way that notorious domain thief can make profit out of my unpopular name.

Though my stolen (domain) name is not much of a big fuss for me or for others, domain theft is an issue of great concern for other web owners. It is alarming that theft incidence can happen so easily and victims cannot do anything to account for the theft done.

Who is behind this syndicated theft? I do not think we can answer right now. Who is to be blamed for the proliferation of cyber thieves? We can go on pointing fingers but still not quell domain theft. I guess the only question we can answer as of now is who is already registered in a particular domain and who is not -- thanks to whois, a *querying database*. Whois is a transmission control protocol(TCP)-based query or a response protocol. It is utilized to identify the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or an autonomous system number on the internet. But then, it is also very probable that domain squatters are using whois to know which domain, in the form of people's real names, can they squat in.

Domain theft and squatting is really a complex and alarming matter. This issue is a concern for current domain owners but more so to those planning to put up a website. This issue is most especially pertinent to those who are planning to put up an online business and use a website for marketing. I guess the best that people can do is to seek only the services of trusted web servers and hosts for domain registrations to ensure the security of their domain.

For more valuable information on domain registration, affiliate program(s), please visit http://www.businessanalyst.com

Building a website that is both function and user friendly is no easy task. Bigger companies sometimes hire both graphic designers and developers to build their website but most little guys cannot afford that. So let's take a look at the things you should pay attention to when building and maintaining your website, especially if you cannot afford to have a team of graphic designers, developers and layout consultants working on your website.

Flash
A lot of times your designer will want to get fancy and offer to design your website in flash. Although it looks great as a portfolio, in reality there are numerous problems with flash websites. First of all, flash animations (in essence that's what your website is going to be) are very large in size. Even though many people nowadays use broadband for browsing the Web, it would be unwise to dismiss a prospect who still uses dial-up and for whom it will take forever to load your website. Second of all, flash websites are not crawlable by search engine spiders, which means you loose any chance of getting free traffic from search engines.

Page Loading Time
Even if you decide not to use flash, your pages still can get very large once you add a lot of text and graphics to them. If your website takes more then 8-15 seconds to load most visitors will probably leave before accessing the actual content. Later in the article we will discuss how to improve loading time by compressing the images.

Reduce the Size of Your Graphics
As mentioned previously, keeping your website's pages as small as possible is very important. Reducing the size of your graphics is one way of getting pages to load faster. Talk to your developer about the way he/she is optimizing the images to make them as small as possible.

Broken Links
Broken links can tremendously hurt your business image. Having broken links on your website makes you look unprofessional. Imagine your visitor looking for something on your website and once he/she finds it and clicks on the link, it doesn't work. There are plenty of tools out there that help check for broken links. If you update your website often you should check for broken links on a regular basis.

HTML Validation
Validating your HTML is an important part of building a website. HTML validation services like W3C Markup Validation Service will check your pages for errors in the code and give you suggestions on how to fix them. This will eliminate any problems visitors might experience with your website.

Browser Compatibility
Browser compatibility was always an issue with many websites. There are a lot of alternative browsers besides Internet Explorer including Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and Opera. Although majority of your visitors will be using Internet Explorer, you cannot afford to lose customers that are accessing your website with a different browser. Many website designs will look great in one browser but will look ridiculous in another. Talk to your developer about the ways he/she is working on making your website browser compatible.

Customer Support
Easy access to customer support options and ways of contacting you are especially crucial for ecommerce businesses. If you are running a web store of any kind there is no way for your visitors to verify whether there is a legitimate company behind your site. You will need to gain their trust in order to get their business. Placing any contact information including toll-free number, live support, etc. on every page of your website is a great way of building the trust between you and your visitors.

Navigation
How you design your navigation will decide whether your customers will easily be able to access all parts of your website or be lost and leave your site without finding what he/she is looking for. Make it easy for prospective buyers to find what they are looking for. Provide plenty of links on your home page, giving visitors an overview of your website's content and choices. Provide links to your home page and main sections such as order form, contact page, products, and articles on every page. Visitors may not visit your pages in the sequence you would like them to. Provide a site map (table of contents). Avoid using JavaScript drop downs or fancy flash navigation. Clearly label each section and if possible, use text links because they are small in size and are also crawlable by search engines.

Easy to Read
Make sure your website is readable. An easy-to-read, professionally-designed website can maximize your sales. Dark text on a light background is easy to read. Avoid text on dark and busy backgrounds. Break up your sales copy into short sections and use subheadings to highlight benefits. Split up long pages into several pages. Use key phrases and punch lines instead of long explanations on why your service/product is better then the rest.

Spell Check
Last but not least, check your spelling. No one likes to read a page filled with spelling errors. For the most part, your designer won't double check your content, especially if he/she is from a different country, so it's your responsibility.

David Cooper has been developing web sites since early 1999. Currently he runs http://www.Spaiz.net - web design company [http://wwww.spaiz.net] and working on a new Content Management System at http://www.azureSites.com

The domain name registration process is not too difficult, but it can take some time (usually 24-72 hours) before your domain name "propagates" throughout the internet. I find that it normally takes less than 20 hours, so keep that time in mind.

"Propagation" is simply the fact that it takes a while for your site to become visible on the internet due to a process called DNS (domain name server) transfer and various databases that have to be updated.

Although the domain name registration process is fairly easy, there are a few things that you should be aware of:

Steps to follow before registering your domain name:

1. Don't just register any domain name that you like or that sounds good to you, except if your company name is well known. Do a bit of keyword research and see if you can incorporate your main keyword into the domain name.

2. Get your hosting account first, since you'll need the DNS information during the domain name registration process. If you register the domain name first, the DNS information will point to your registrar's servers until you transfer it.

3. Don't just go for the cheapest registrar. Remember, you normally get what you pay for... however, you shouldn't have to pay more than $10 a year for a domain name.

Steps and tips to follow during the domain name registration process:

1. Choose your favorite registrar and register with them to get yourself a username and password. Each domain name registrar will have their own policies and procedures, so make sure that you read everything carefully before you register your domain name. You'll also learn a lot by doing that.

2. Log into your account and type in your domain name to check if it's available.

3. Always register the .com version of a domain name wherever possible. If the .com extension of a domain name is not available, then register a .net or .org extension. However, try your best to register a .com domain by adding words like 2u, 4u at the back or words such as first, best or anything else that will fit in front.

You can also use domain name spinner software to help you choose your domain name.

4. Make sure that you register your domain name for at least 5-10 years. Wow! I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but it helps to establish credibility with the search engines. Just don't ask me where I got this information from, since it's extremely valuable.

I normally register my domain names for 5 years, but 10 is better. I know that it's a bit expensive, but if you make a great site, you'll easily recover your investment.

5. Don't register domain names with dashes. There's too many of them around already and it looks silly (uhm... just my personal opinion). The main advantage however is that domain names without dashes also establishes credibility with the search engines. Avoid dashes at all costs.

6. Try and make your domain name as short as possible or at least something that can easily be remembered. After you have registered your domain name, make sure that the registrar lock function is activated otherwise someone else might be able to transfer your domain name without your permission.

This is extremely important, since you don't want to loose your domain name... and your shirt when someone else steals it from you.

7. Once the domain name registration process is complete, you should transfer your DNS information to your host. The sooner the better. When you sign up with your host, they'll normally send you the DNS info along with your activation email or you can go to their forums (if they have one) and have a look around.

If all else fails, use their technical support. Most registrars require two DNS addresses and it looks something like this: ns1.cowboy-server.com, ns2.cowboy-server.com

While this is by no means a comprehensive guide to the domain name registration process, it's more or less what you should do and be aware of.

James B. is the Webmaster and Content Writer at Web Site Domain Names 2u.com